Lio
by Goblin Cat KC
Summary: Leonardo must make a decision one hot, rainy night. Warning: mpreg, not so happy.


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Lio   
by KC ****

Disclaimer: I don't own any of this. **  
Summary**: Leonardo must make a decision one hot, rainy night. **  
Other Info**: a KC drabble **  
Prompt**: mpreg, for kinectra

It's been growing for days, hard, hot, pressing painfully deep inside him. He's taken to sleeping longer, skipping meditations to lie curled up on himself, lying in his own fear and swallowing his fevered nightmares. Weeks pass. When he hears the downstairs door shut, hears Donatello finally leave his garage and drag himself to bed, he sits up and listens.

The lair is quiet. Water whispers through the pipes around him, rats skitter back and forth behind the walls, but his brothers and his master are asleep. Even so, he guards against the slightest noise, wincing at the groan of the door as he slipped out. No one wakes. He eases the door shut, then turns and walks down the tunnel, one hand pressed to his abdomen.

The sewers are stifling, but he shivers as if he is made of ice. Cold sweat covers him, and he trembles from a constant ache, breathing shallow and fast. Walking seems to help, loosening muscles that have lain cramped and tight for too long. He vaguely knows where he is. He recognizes the pattern of light and shadow from the gutters of silent streets above him.

At first he thinks it's the pounding pressure in his head, but he realizes that it's rain when it sprays down from the pavement. It clears the sewers, bringing with it dead leaves and scraps of paper that disappear into the darkness. Lightning flashes every few seconds, dim and muted behind the golden lamp light that barely reaches down to him.

Finally it's far enough. He falls to his knees, weary and nauseous and exhausted, and waits. Long minutes pass. His stomach tightens, releases. Tightens. Presses in on itself so hard that he thinks he won't be able to breathe. He bends forward, doubles up as he gasps, and leans on his arms pressed to the concrete. He rocks with his body's tremors, wondering if it will end.

His body spasms so hard that he bites his tongue. Blood fills his mouth, and then it's done.

The egg is off white. Even down here, he can see its silhouette, the shell lit by the gutters. Its absence in him is a relief, leaving him panting and boneless. He leans back against the wall, letting the rain spill around him. He can breathe again, and for a moment his mouth hangs slack as he gathers himself back together.

The egg does not surprise him. He doesn't know how he knew. His body simply knew, his long suppressed instincts showing him what to do. Now they're telling him to take the egg and bury it, swaddle it safely in dirt. Hide it from predators. Give it time to hatch. To grow.

He glances sideways at it as if afraid that it will attack.

What hatches out of this egg will be nothing but danger and death.

Is it Raphael's? Michelangelo's? Donatello's? He's lain with all three many, many times. They'll all want a child. He can hear their arguments in his mind. It's a miracle that they can have children. They're not a dead end anymore. They don't have to stay on earth, after all. Now they might have incentive to creep towards the light.

They'll scour baby name books. They'll scavenge toys and care books and blankets and send April buying anything else they can't find themselves. They'll discuss different colored masks and how to keep children safe under New York.

And they'll pull their punches.

His eyes narrow as he stares at the egg. Such a fragile, delicate thing. So easily breakable. A kick to his midsection could shatter it. A clumsy fall and it'd be crushed. Raphael...his brother wouldn't look into his eyes. Raphael would look into his plastron and shake his head and murmur something about not hurting the egg. Michelangelo would gasp in shock that he'd risk it at all.

Imagining the arguments when they're angry come all too easily. Bitch, whore, cunt...he's traded vicious insults with Raphael often enough, but these sting deeper even in his mind. And when they aren't arguing, the looks, the gentle consideration, the comments made innocuously enough...

She.

Her.

The pronouns make him want to retch. Michelangelo would make noises about changing his name. Lio, maybe. A subtle difference. They would simply never use his full name. His true name.

How else would they change? Flowers? Softer words? Would they forget Leonardo and treat him like a long lost sister? Would Leonardo disappear entirely? The brother best adept at stealth and silence, would he fade into the silent sister casting longing glances at her swords, quietly going mad? Their sister only, barely an echo of a name, remade because of a whim of fate. A brother freed by tradition, a sister trapped by it.

There's a scratch, faint but distinct, from within the egg, a hint of a shadow from within the shell. The egg tips so slightly. The creature is alive inside. Fragile. Lethal. The salvation of his family. A sword that will cut out his soul and leaving nothing but an eggshell.

The lightning will swallow any sound, he thinks. The storm will cover him.

And the rain will take it all away for the rats skittering behind the walls.

He stares at the egg.

The night grows dark.


End file.
